Rack type storage systems are prevalent in warehouses as well as in “big box” retail stores to store and display products. In a warehouse environment the racks are typically used to store large containers in which a plurality of products, packaged or unpackaged, have been delivered to the facility, while in retail stores the racks are used both for the storage of bulk packed containers as well as for the display of individual packages, maintaining a “warehouse look” for the retail shelves. Such rack storage systems are economical to build and install, and provide wide expanses of open shelving space, allowing packaging containers of numerous sizes to be easily accommodated in a variety of arrangements.
Typically, store inventory placed before the shopping public is laid out through a “planogram” system, in which the layout of the shelving and the proposed arrangement of goods on the shelves is depicted graphically to allow a decision to be made for purposes of best presenting the products and to assist store personnel in setting up the shelving in accordance with the designed arrangement. A very feature of storage rack shelving that allows accommodation of large quantities of various products—the absence of means for dividing the shelf expanses into sub-units—can make it difficult or organize and segregate the products stored on the shelves and thus hinders execution of planogrammed product placement and display, in which each item has a particular location and amount of shelf space for its placement. Store personnel are often left to their own devices in deciding precisely where to load product on the racks, and products can be intermingled. Likewise in a warehouse environment, rather than stacking products in an orderly fashion, a particular product can be spread across a relatively wide expanse of shelving, limiting availability for other products and making inventorying of product more difficult. In a retail environment, whether planogrammed or not, a lack of means for dividing the shelving into segments can also inhibit effective restocking, and can make it more difficult for a customer to locate and retrieve a particular product.
It is accordingly a purpose of the present invention to provide a divider system in the form of a kit that can be installed on rack type storage systems to sub-divide rack shelving into discrete sub-units in accordance with the desires of the user,
A further purpose of the present invention is to provide such a kit that can be used in connection with rack systems of varying dimensions.
Yet a further purpose of the present invention is to provide such a kit that is of economical construction, that is easy to install, which provides flexibility in assembly are arrangement, and which can be boxed and stored in a relatively small volume.